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ECONOMICS

How financial markets are stymying climate action

  • 15 June 2016

 

There is little doubt that the means to dramatically reduce the amount of pollution produced by developed economies is already theoretically available. It is perfectly possible to redesign industrial systems so that they do not pollute and do not consume finite resources at a rate that is unsustainable.

But it requires a radical shift — and the biggest barrier to that shift occurring, the financial markets, is barely even mentioned in discussions of the challenge.

One of the ironies of humanity's post-industrial predicament is that many of the great triumphs of the industrial era, such as centralised power grids, are now the cause of our problems.

Instead, the world is relying on changes to slowly bubble up, and there are signs that a turning point has been reached, especially with fossil fuels. The world's largest coal producer, Peabody, has filed for bankruptcy. 

Coal fired power plants are increasingly 'out of the money'. China has suspended new coal power plant approvals. Saudi Arabia is planning to sell five per cent of its state oil company Aramco to create a $US2 trillion sovereign wealth fund that can help the country prepare for the post fossil fuel era.

Bloomberg's 2015 New Energy Outlook report forecasts there will be investment of $8 trillion in renewables by 2024. By that date, 60 per cent of world energy will come from zero emission technology (although there will be enough legacy fossil fuel plants and investment in new coal-fired capacity in developing countries to ensure that global carbon dioxide emissions continue rising until 2029).

The likelihood, however, is that much of this adaptation will be too slow to address the systemic challenges. Worse, the politics of environmentalism is too often based on ignorance of how economies and financial markets work.

For example, we do not need less economic growth. Growth is simply the rate of transactions, the movement of money. What is required is less consumption of resources and despoliation of the environment. Transactions can increase without greater consumption or such despoliation occurring.

 

"There is no prospect that banks will lend for innovative ways of reconfiguring our industrial systems. Indeed, they would laugh at the very idea."

 

Indeed, that is exactly what is happening. Financial services, for example, create 'economic growth' but they are typically the shifting of minute pieces of data that consume almost no resources.

Another commonly cited solution, that people need to stop having babies, is also false. In fact, that has already occurred and

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